brian

jake

I’m a big fan of WGBH in Boston. Tonight, I’m doing some work and listening to their nightly jazz. It’s 11:30 and they’re playing a song that’s just great, and I want to know who it’s by.

Saunter over to WGBH.org and I see this note…

This site is temporarily down as we are moving the servers to our new building in Brighton, Mass.

Please pardon the inconvenience. We expect to complete the move quickly, and look forward to welcoming you back to all of our pages soon.

Because they are handled by a different server, our WGBH.org donation pages are fully functioning and secure. You can still pledge or renew online right now. Thank you for your support.

Donate using our online donation form

Thank you for your patience, and come back soon!

Ouch! So GBH is this world-famous media company (a non-profit, but a seriously successful one) and they have these wonderful new studios in Brighton… and they have to shut down their entire site to move the servers? Really?

Comments (1)

As opposed to a 3 volume/$100,000 move strategy?

I dunno if &#8216;GBH runs it&#8217;s web servers in-house, from a colo, or uses a 3rd party service like Akamai, but &#8220;moving&#8221; servers, physically or virtually or both, can be a hassle.

In the case of a non-profit just biting the bullet and shutting down for a few hours late at night midweek seems reasonable.

Sure all sorts of elaborate plans coulda been made for the transition but honestly, would they have been worth it? All of that additional complexity compared to renting a few trucks and having all IT staff stay overnight making the move happen? What, a few hundred folks got &#8220;Sorry, come back later&#8221; notices?

Bang for the buck I guessing &#8216;GBH did the right thing. Save the six-sigma uptime braggery for those whose business is dependent on it (& apparently the donation service was up & running), keep the rest in perspective.